692: She swung the . . .
What a Piece of Work I Am, Chapter 21 concludes
SHE SWUNG the door open and looked in. The light coming through the venetian blinds cast sharp shadows on the bedspread, shadows that slipped over the edge of the bed, fell onto the floor, and vanished. Somewhere, perhaps in the bungalow next door, a radio was playing. Ariane had her cart of cleaning products and supplies with her. For a moment she stood in the doorway, beside her cart, not moving. She had no particular desire to do anything. She felt that nothing had worked, and nothing was going to work. She had begun to suspect, on the way from the storeroom to this bungalow, that Guy had no real interest in her, that he had maneuvered her into working as a maid for the good of the resort, for the sake of his own position.
She walked into the room and let herself sink onto the edge of the bed. She tried to will herself not to cry. Then, something on the mirrored vanity caught her eye. It was a pair of earrings, left there, apparently carelessly. They were reflected in the mirror of the vanity top and again in the mirror on the wall. They seemed enormous.
Ariane got up and crossed to the vanity and picked them up, hefted them in her hand. Are they real? she wondered. She didn’t have much of an eye for jewelry. The things she had bought for herself were cheap, and sometimes, in the wrong light, she saw that they looked it. She had a few other pieces that she had been given as gifts. Those she kept hidden in an envelope taped to the back of a dresser drawer and smuggled out of the house to wear on dates. She suspected that they were cheap, too. She couldn’t tell about these earrings. She didn’t see any obvious clue to their quality, nothing that might tell someone who wouldn’t otherwise know that they were the real thing.
She brought the back of her hand to her brow and held it there, limply drooping, with the earrings in it, and checked herself in the mirror. The real thing, she thought, and since it was a dramatic moment, she played it out. Will I ever get the real thing? she asked herself, turning her head to see the earrings in a better light. And will I be able to recognize it if I see it, or will I be as stupid about it as I am about these earrings? She replaced them on the vanity and glanced out the window to see if anyone had been watching.
[to be continued]
In Topical Guide 692, Mark Dorset considers Genres: Film Noir; Tropes: Venetian Blinds, Shadows; and Foreshadowing from this episode.
Have you missed an episode or two or several?
You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide. The Substack serialization of Little Follies begins here; Herb ’n’ Lorna begins here; Reservations Recommended begins here; Where Do You Stop? begins here; What a Piece of Work I Am begins here.
You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed. The Substack podcast reading of Little Follies begins here; Herb ’n’ Lorna begins here; Reservations Recommended begins here; Where Do You Stop? begins here; What a Piece of Work I Am begins here.
You can listen to “My Mother Takes a Tumble” and “Do Clams Bite?” complete and uninterrupted as audiobooks through YouTube.
You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)
At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of Little Follies, Herb ’n’ Lorna, Reservations Recommended, and Where Do You Stop?
You’ll find overviews of the entire work in An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy (a pdf document), The Origin Story (here on substack), Between the Lines (a video, here on Substack), and at Encyclopedia.com.